Rhiannon Giddens has announced the release of her new album, You’re the One. To be released on August 18th on Nonesuch Records, ‘You’re the One’ is also her third solo album, her first in six years, her last being 2017’s critically acclaimed Freedom Highway (reviewed here).
The album was produced by Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Tank and the Bangas) and recorded at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami with a band composed of Giddens’s closest musical collaborators from the past decade alongside musicians from Splash’s own Rolodex, topped off with a horn section, making an impressive ten-to-twelve-person ensemble.
The first single from the album – its title track – is also available today. ‘You’re the One’ was inspired by a moment Giddens had with her son not long after he was born (he’s now ten years old, and she also has a fourteen-year-old daughter). “Your life has changed forever, and you don’t know it until you’re in the middle of it and it hits you,” Giddens says. “I held his little cheek up to my face, and was just reminded, ‘Oh my God, my children—they have every bit of my heart.'”
It was announced yesterday that Giddens has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for the opera Omar, which she co-wrote with Michael Abels (Get Out, Nope). Omar, based on the autobiography of an enslaved Muslim man, Omar Ibn Said, who lived in Charleston, SC in the 19th century, made its world premiere last year at Spoleto Festival and has been performed at LA Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and North Carolina Arts, with San Francisco Opera scheduled for this November.
Giddens has also just announced the biggest headlining shows of her career, including a performance at the Barbican in London on February 21 (tickets on sale May 19). She is currently on tour in the UK with Francesco Turrisi, with upcoming shows in London (Union Chapel, May 11), Norwich (May 12), Birmingham (May 13) and Saffron Walden (May 14). She will also play a one-off concert with Christian McBride and Francesco Turrisi at London’s Wigmore Hall on July 17. More details can be found here.
Giddens made You’re the One with some of her closest musical collaborators from the past decade, including her partner, Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, plus multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell, bassist Jason Sypher, and Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu. The album features electric and upright bass, conga, Cajun and Piano accordions, guitars, a Western string section, and Miami horns, among other instruments, capturing the inclusive spirit that channels through all of her work.
“I hope that people just hear American music,” Giddens says. “Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock—it’s all there. I like to be where it meets organically. They’re fun songs, and I wanted them to have as much of a chance as they could to reach people who might dig them but don’t know anything about what I do. If they’re introduced to me through this record, they might go listen to other music I’ve made and make some new discoveries.”
pre-order/pre-save here
Tracklisting:
1. Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad
2. You’re the One
3. Yet to Be (feat. Jason Isbell)
4. Wrong Kind of Right
5. Another Wasted Life
6. You Louisiana Man
7. If You Don’t Know How Sweet It Is
8. Hen in the Foxhouse
9. Who Are You Dreaming Of
10. You Put the Sugar in My Bowl
11. Way Over Yonder
12. Good Ol’ Cider
UK tour dates:
May 11: Union Chapel, London ~
May 12: Saint Andrews & Blackfriars Hall at Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Norwich ~
May 13: Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham ~
May 14: Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden ~
July 17: Wigmore Hall, London $
February 21, 2024: Barbican, London
~with Francesco Turrisi
$with Christian McBride & Francesco Turrisi